West Penn Power settles case

PITTSBURGH — West Penn Power has agreed to drop its appeal of a $109 million verdict in the death of a woman killed by a falling power line in front of her two young daughters and will pay $105 million instead — as well as inspecting its lines for the kind of dangerous splices that caused the woman’s death in June 2009.

A West Penn spokesman has confirmed the proposed settlement, which was announced today by Shanin Specter, the Philadelphia attorney representing the family of 39-year-old Carrie Goretzka.

An Allegheny County jury in December found West Penn workers didn’t properly splice a power line over Goretzka’s backyard in Irwin, causing it to fall on her while her daughters and mother-in-law looked on helplessly.

Specter said the settlement is “West Penn saying the jury got it right.”

Representatives of Indiana area social service agencies uncovered a pattern of parental supervision problems in a White Township home where a 13-month-old boy drowned in a bathtub earlier this month, according to criminal charges filed Tuesday by state police.

The home problems are one of the factors behind the arrests of the boy’s parents: Tonya Nicole Thomas, 25, who has been charged with